The Art of Taking Notes at the University: Étienne Gaudet (Paris, ca. 1320-1392)

The library of Étienne Gaudet has preoccupied scholars in the field of medieval history and philosophy. It arose the interest of Palémon Glorieux, who misattributed some of the manuscripts from this library to Jean de Falisca. The error was later corrected by Zénon Kaluza in his seminal work dedicated to Thomas of Cracow.

What the present volume brings on top of the research already dedicated to the subject comes from the fact that our methodology if heavily influenced by the insight that most of what this library transmits consists of notes. Keeping that in mind, we have been able to discover fragments of texts that had been considered lost, correctly identify lesser-known figures mentioned in these manuscripts (or at least challenge old identifications) and understand some doctrinal aspects from a different perspective. Another important issue that comes to light in the present volume is the way Étienne Gaudet used and reused his notes, wrote tables to retrieve them, abbreviated texts from other authors and drafted his own works.

This volume will be relevant to the scholar studying medieval academic practices of the late fourteenth century, since it introduces them to new and exciting materials that are a direct testimony of what happened in the proverbial classroom. It will also be of extreme interest to scholars who study the practice of note-taking and for whom the Middle Ages have not yet been very generous.